Month: November 2019

Van Inwagen contra Meinong on Having Being and Lacking Being

There is a passage in Peter van Inwagen's "Existence, Ontological Commitment, and Fictional Entities," (in Existence: Essays in Ontology, CUP, 2014, p. 98, emphasis added), in which he expresses his incomprehension of what the Meinongian means by 'has being' and 'lacks being': 

. . . the Meinongian must mean something different by 'has being' and 'lacks being' from what I mean by these phrases. But what does he mean by them? I do not know. I say 'x has being' means '~(y) ~y = x'; the Meinongian denies this. Apparently, he takes 'has being' to be a primitive, an indefinable term, whereas I think that 'has being' can be defined in terms of  'all' and 'not'. (And I take definability in terms of 'all' and 'not' to be important, because I am sure that the Meinongian means exactly what I do by 'all' and 'not' — and thus he understands what I mean by 'has being' and is therefore an authority on the question whether he and I mean the same.) And there the matter must rest.  The Meinongian believes that 'has being' has a meaning that cannot be explained in terms of unrestricted universal quantification and negation. 

Before I begin, let me say that I don't think van Inwagen is on this occasion feigning incomprehension as some philosophers are wont to do: I believe he really has no idea what 'has being' and cognate expressions could mean if they don't mean what he thinks they mean.

No one articulates and defends the thin theory of existence/being better than Peter van Inwagen who is arguably  'king' of the thin theorists.  The essence of the thin theory is that

1. x exists =df ~(y)~(y=x).

Driving the tilde though the right-hand expression, left to right, yields the logically equivalent

1*. x exists =df (∃y)(y = x)

which may be easier for you to wrap your head around.  In something closer to  English

1**.  x exists =df x is identical to something.

The thin theory is 'thin' because it reduces existence to a purely logical notion definable in terms of the purely logical notions of unrestricted universal quantification, negation, and identity.  What is existence?  On the thin theory existence is just identity-with-something.  (Not some one thing, of course, but something or other.) Characteristically Meinongian, however, is the thesis of Aussersein which could be put as follows:

M. Some items have no being.

Now suppose two things that van Inwagen supposes.  Suppose that (i) there is exactly one sense of 'exists'/'is' and that (ii) this one sense is supplied in its entirety by (1) and its equivalents.  Then (M) in conjunction with the two suppositions entails

C. Some items are not identical to anything.

But (C) is self-contradictory since it implies that some item is such that it is not identical to itself, i.e. '(∃x)~(x = x).'

Here we have the reason for van Inwagen's sincere incomprehension of what the Meinongian means by 'has being.'  He cannot understand it because it seems to him to be self-contradictory.  But it is important to note that (M) by itself is not logically contradictory.  It is contradictory only in conjunction with van Inwagen's conviction that 'x has being' means '~(y) ~(y = x).'

In other words, if you ASSUME the thin theory, then the characteristic Meinongian thesis (M) issues in a logical contradiction. But why assume the thin theory?  Are we rationally obliged to accept it?

I don't accept the thin theory, but I am not a Meinongian either. (Barry Miller is another who is neither a thin theorist nor a Meinongian.)  'Thin or Meinongian' is a false alternative by my lights.  I am not a Meinongian because I do not believe that existence is a classificatory principle that partitions a logically prior domain of ontologically neutral items into the existing items and the nonexisting items.  I hold that everything exists, which, by obversion, implies that nothing does not exist.  So I reject (M).

I reject the thin theory not because some things don't exist, but because there is more to the existence of what exists than identity-with-something.  And what more is that?  To put it bluntly: the more is the sheer extra-logical and extra-linguistic existence of the thing, its being there (in a non-locative sense of course).  The 'more' is its not being nothing. (If you protest that to not be nothing is just to be something, where 'something' is just a bit of logical syntax, then I will explain that there are two senses of 'nothing' that need distinguishing.)  Things exist, and they exist beyond language and logic. 

Can I argue for this?  It is not clear that one needs to argue the point since it is, to me at least, self-evident.  But I can argue for it anyway.

If for x to exist is (identically) for x to be identical to some y, this leaves open the question:  does y exist or not?  You will say that y exists.  (If you say that y does not exist, then you break the link between existence and identity-with-something.)  So you say that y exists.  But then your thin theory amounts to saying that the existence of x reduces to its identity with something that exists.  My response will be that you have moved in an explanatory circle, one whose diameter is embarrassingly short.  Your task was to explain what it is for something to exist, and you answer by saying that to exist is to be identical to something that exists.  This response is no good, however, since it leaves unexplained what it is for something to exist!  You have helped yourself to the very thing you need to explain.

It is the extra-logical and extra-linguistic existence of things that grounds our ability to quantify over them.  Given that things exist, and that everything exists, we have no need for an existence predicate: we can rid ourselves of the existence predicate 'E' by defining 'E' in terms of '(∃y)(y = x).'  But note that the definiens contains nothing but logical syntax.  What this means is that one is presupposing the extra-logical existence of items in the domain of quantification.  You can rid yourself of the existence predicate if you like, but you cannot thereby rid yourself of the first-level existence of the items over which you are quantifying.

Here is another way of seeing the point.  Bertrand Russell held that existence is a propositional function's being sometimes true.  Let the propositional function be (what is expressed by) 'x is a dog.'  That function is sometimes true (in Russell's idiosyncratic phraseology) if the  free variable 'x' has a substituend that turns the propositional function or open sentence into a true closed sentence.  So consider 'Fido,' the name of an existing dog and 'Cerberus.'  How do I know that substituting  'Fido' for 'x' results in a true sentence while substituting 'Cerberus' does not? Obviously, I  must have recourse to a more fundamental notion of existence than the one that Russell defines.  I must know that Fido exists while Cerberus does not.  Clearly, existence in the fundamental sense is the existence that belongs to individuals, and not existence as a propositional function's being sometimes true.

Now if you understand the above, then you will be able to understand why, in van Inwagen's words, "The Meinongian believes that 'has being' has a meaning that cannot be explained in terms of unrestricted universal quantification and negation."  The thin theory entails that there is no difference in reality between x and existing x.  But for Meinong there is a difference: it is the difference between Sosein and Sein.  While I don't think that there can be a Sosein that floats free of Sein. I maintain that there is a distinction in reality between a thing (nature, essence, Sosein, suchness) and existence.  

If van Inwagen thinks that he has shown that Meinong's doctrine entails a formal-logical contradiction, he is fooling himself.  Despite his fancy footwork and technical rigmarole, all van Inwagen succeeds in doing is begging the question against Meinong.        

Berdyaev: Communism as a Form of Idolatry

David Horowitz, Radical Son: A Generational Odyssey, Touchstone, 1997, p. 55:

After the Russian Revolution of 1905, the philosopher Nicholas Berdyaev analyzed communism as a form of idolatry in a way that proved to be prophetic. Berdyaev traced the origins of what he called the Marxist “heresy” back to the tower of Babel. In that story, people had tried to achieve their own redemption — without a transcendent God — by building a ladder to heaven. Communists had a similar ambition. They had projected onto fallible beings godlike powers that would enable them to overcome their human fate. In do so, Berdyaev warned, the communists had created demons they would not be able to control.

Berdyaev soul history

Attitude, Gratitude, Beatitude

Happy Thanksgiving to all my Stateside readers.

The attitude of gratitude conduces to beatitude.  Can it be said in plain Anglo-Saxon?  Grateful thoughts lead one to happiness.  However you say it, it is true.  The miserable make themselves miserable by their bad thinking; the happy happy by their correct mental hygiene. 

Broad generalizations, these.  They admit of exceptions, as goes without saying.  He who is afflicted with Weilian malheur or clinical depression cannot think his way out of his misery.  Don't get hung up on the exceptions.  Meditate on the broad practical truth.  On Thanksgiving, and every day.

Leftists will complain that I am 'preaching.'  But that only reinforces my point: they complain and they think, strangely, that any form of exhortation just has to be hypocritical.  Besides not knowing what hypocrisy is, they don't know how to appreciate what actually exists and provably works. Appreciation is conservative.  Scratch a leftist and likely as not you'll find a nihilist,  a denier of the value of what is, a hankerer after what is not, and in too many cases, what is impossible. 

Even the existence of leftists is something to be grateful for.  They mark out paths not to be trodden.  And their foibles provide  plenty of blog fodder.  For example, there is the curious phenomenon of hypocrisy-in-reverse.

The Dissident Right

Here:

The dissident right is, to some degree, a reaction to the shift on the Right, among the Buckleyites mostly, to embrace the blank slate and egalitarianism. This was mostly due to the infestation of neoconservatives and libertarians. The neocons brought with them that old Marxist belief that society can be willed into any shape you like, regardless of the people in it. Libertarians, like Marxists, simply refuse to accept the reality of the human condition. As a result, the mainstream Right implicitly embraced the blank slate.

 

When is Politics War?

I have been saying that politics is war.  I don't mean to suggest that it is the nature of politics to be war, but only that in the present circumstances it is. When is politics war? When the constitutional order is no longer respected. And that is now in the USA. To mention just three things under assault by the Left: the First Amendment, with its protections of religious liberty and free speech; the Second Amendment; the Electoral College.

The leftist sees politics as war. And so that is how we must see it if we are to meet their attack. It is the foolish conservative, living in the past, hobbled by his virtues and hindered by his decency, who sees politics as a gentlemanly debate by agreed-upon rules under an umbrella of shared principles. There are no such rules, and there is no such umbrella.

Defending Barry Miller Against Herman Philipse, Part I: Existence as a First-Level Property

In his Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews  review of Elmar J. Kremer's Analysis of Existing: Barry Miller's Approach to God, Herman Philipse presents the following sketch of  Miller's cosmological  argument  a contingentia mundi for the existence of God:

1. Existence is a real first-level accidental property of contingent individuals.

2. Concrete contingent individuals are distinct from their existence.

3. This distinction implies a paradox, unless:

4. All existing concrete contingent individuals are caused to exist by a necessarily existing and therefore uncaused individual that is identical with its existence, and this is God.

5. At least one concrete contingent individual exists, e.g., the dog Fido, or the universe.

6. Hence, God exists (from 1-5).

Philipse is unimpressed with the argument.  He rejects (1) as well as (2)-(4).  In this entry I will confine myself to a discussion of Philipse's rejection of (1), and indeed to just one of his arguments against (1).  

It is obvious that Miller's cosmological argument cannot get off the ground unless existence is a property of  contingent individuals in some defensible sense of 'property.'  This is what Philipse appears to deny.  He appears to endorse the Frege-Russell view according to which 'exist(s)' is always only a second-level predicate and never an admissible first-level predicate, where a first-level or first-order predicate is one that  stands for a property that is meaningfully attributable to concrete individuals.   On the Frege-Russell view, then,  existence is not a first-level property, but a property of properties, Fregean concepts, Russellian propositional functions or some cognate item.   But this dogma of analysis — as I call it –  (i) flies in the face of the linguistic data and (ii) brings with it troubles of its own. (See my "Existence: Two Dogmas of Analysis" in Neo-Aristotelian Perspectives in Metaphysics, eds. Novotny and Novak, Routledge 2014, pp. 45-75)

That we predicate existence of concrete individuals seems as obvious as anything.  That we do so is a datum that ought to be  presumed innocent until proven guilty of incoherence or contradiction.  We predicate existence of individuals using proper names, demonstratives, pronouns, and pure indexicals as in 'Socrates exists,' 'This exists,'  'She exists,' and 'I exist.'   'Socrates' is a proper name. 'This' is a demonstrative.  'She' is a pronoun. 'I' is a pure indexical.  Many of these first-level predications of existence are true.  And if true, or false, then meaningful.  This is evidence that 'exist(s)'  functions as a meaningful first-level predicate in singular sentences such as 'Scollay Square no longer exists' and 'Copley Square still exists.'   The linguistic data suggest that 'exist(s)' has a use as a meaningful first-level predicate in the the way that 'numerous' has no use  as a meaningful first-level predicate. 

(Bertrand Russell made a brave but unsuccessful attempt at assimilating existence to numerousness by arguing that, just as it would be the fallacy of division to argue that Socrates is numerous from the premises that he is a philosopher and that philosophers are numerous, it would also be the fallacy of division to argue that Socrates exists from the premises that he is a philosopher and that philosophers exist. Following Frege, he held that 'exist(s)' is never an admissible first-level predicate.)

Consider the Cartesian cogito ergo sum.   It terminates in the proposition, sum, I am, I exist. The proposition is true, hence meaningful. First-level predications of existence would thus appear to be meaningful.  When I think the thought that I exist, I attribute to myself the property of existence. This is prima facie evidence that existence is a property of individuals in a suitably broad sense of 'property.'  Of course, when I say of a thing that it exists, I am not adding to its description or to the list of its quidditative determinations. So existence is not a property of individuals in that sense.  The following is a non sequitur:

Existence is not a quidditative property of individuals.

Therefore

Existence is not a property of individuals at all, but a property of properties, the property of being instantiated.

It doesn't follow, because existence might be a non-quidditative property of individuals.  The premise is obvious and contested by no one; but one cannot leap straightaway from it to the Fressellian doctrine which removes existence from individuals entirely and installs it at the level of concepts/properties/propositional functions.  

It is well known, however, that certain puzzles arise if we treat 'exist(s)' as a genuine first-level or first-order predicate.  And so a defender of (1) needs to be able to rebut the arguments against the view that 'exist(s)' is a genuine first-level predicate and existence a genuine first-level property.  Philipse claims that  if even one of these arguments contra is sound, then (1) cannot be sustained. 

Let us consider a famous argument from Kant who is widely regarded as having anticipated Frege.  Philipse writes,

Finally, does Miller succeed in refuting the Kantian argument to the effect that existence is not a real property? According to this argument, it is always possible to assert of one and the same entity (described by a list of its properties) both that it exists and that it does not exist. It follows from this plausible premise that existence cannot be a property (Critique of Pure Reason, A600/B628). Miller answers by stipulating that although existence is a real first-order property of concrete individuals, it differs from all other properties in two respects. First, existence does not add anything to what the individual is, and second, it does not add anything to an antecedent reality (p. 38). In my view, however, this stipulation amounts to changing the ordinary meaning of the term 'property', so that Miller's reply to Kant commits a fallacy of ambiguity. I conclude that Miller does not succeed in establishing that existence is a real accidental first-level property of concrete individuals.

This response is a total misunderstanding.  Kant does not show that existence cannot be a property; what he shows, if he shows anything, is that it cannot be a real property where a real property is a determining property, and where "a determining predicate [property in contemporary jargon] is a predicate [property] which is added to the concept of the subject and enlarges it." (A598 B626) 

Let the concept be cat. This relatively indeterminate concept can be further determined and made more specific by adding  real or determining properties to it such as male, short-haired, black, five-years-old, and so on.  Kant's point is that existence is not a property that could be added to this, or any, concept to further determine it.  Existence is not a determining property. And in that sense it is not a real property.  To predicate it of an individual leaves its whatness (quidditas) unaltered. Existence is not a quidditative determination.

Suppose the process of determination were taken to the max such that our cat concept becomes fully determinate in the sense that if anything in reality were to instantiate it, exactly one individual would instantiate it.  The concept would then be so specific as to be individuating. But it would not follow that anything in reality does instantiate it.  And if anything in reality were to instantiate it, then that individual would be quidditatively indistinguishable from the concept.  The concept and its object, it there is one, would coincide quidditatively. (A599 B627)  This is why Kant says that "the actual contains no more than the merely possible." The concept expresses the mere possibility of a corresponding object; whether there is a corresponding object, however, is an extra-conceptual matter.   

You can see how this puts paid to the Cartesian ontological argument "from mere concepts." No doubt the concept of God is the concept of a being possessing all perfections. But even if existence is a perfection ( a great-making property in Plantinga's lingo) in God, existence is not contained in any concept we can wrap our heads around, and so cannot be analytically extracted from any such concept.  Hence we cannot prove the existence of God by sheer analysis of the God concept. No concept in he mind of a discursive, ectypal intellect, not even the concept of God,  is such that by sheer analysis of its content one could prove the existence of a corresponding object.  

The point that Philipse misses is that Kant's claim that existence is not a real, i.e., determining property of individuals is consistent with Miller's claim that existence is a real, i.e., non-Cambridge property of individuals. Philipse mistakenly thinks that if existence is not a determining property of an individual, then it is not a property of an individual.  That is the same non sequitur as was exposed above.  If existence is not a quidditative property of individuals, it does not follow that that it is not a property of individuals, but a property of properties.

Kant's argument does not refute Miller's (1) above.

Buddhism, Suffering, and One Reason I am not a Buddhist

(This entry touches upon some themes discussed with greater rigor, thoroughness, and scholarliness in my "No Self? A Look at a Buddhist Argument," International Philosophical Quarterly, vol. 42, no. 4 (December 2002), pp. 453-466.)

For Buddhism, all is dukkha, suffering.  All is unsatisfactory.  This, the First Noble Truth, runs contrary to ordinary modes of thinking:  doesn't life routinely offer us, besides pain and misery and disappointment, intense pleasures and deep satisfactions?  How then can it be true that all is unsatisfactory?  For the Buddhist, however, what is ordinarily taken by the unenlightened worldling  to be sukha (pleasure) is at bottom dukkha.  Why? 

Because no pleasure, mental or physical, gives permanent and plenary satisfaction.  Each satisfaction leaves us in the lurch, wanting more.  A desire satisfied is a desire entrenched. Masturbate once, and you will do it a thousand times, with the need for repetition testifying to the unsatisfactoriness of the initial satisfaction.   If it were fully satisfactory, why would you be inclined to repeat the pleasure? Each pleasure promises more that it can possibly deliver, and so refers you to the next and the next and the next, none of them finally satisfactory.  It's a sort of Hegelian schlechte Unendlichkeit, bad infinity.  Desire satisfied becomes craving, and craving is an instance of dukkha.  One becomes attached to the paltry and impermanent and one suffers when it cannot be had.  One also suffers when the satisfaction sought is achieved but revealed to be less than what one expected.

There is more to it than this, but this is the essence of it.  The thing to note is that the claim in the First Noble Truth is not the triviality that there is a lot of suffering in this life, but that life itself, as insatiable desiring and craving for what is unattainable to it, is ill, pain-inducing, profoundly unsatisfactory, and something to be escaped from if possible. It is a radical diagnosis of the human predicament, and the proposed cure is equally radical: extirpation of desire.  The problem for the Buddhist is not that some of our desires are misdirected and inordinate; the problem is desire itself.  The solution, then, is not rightly-ordered desire, as in Christianity, but the eradication of desire.  The root (radix) of suffering is desire and that root must be uprooted (e-radi-cated).  It is a radical solution.

Although Buddhism appears in some ways to be a sort of 'empirical religion' — to hazard an oxymoron — the claim that all is suffering involves an interpretation of our experience that goes well beyond the empirically given.  Buddhism, as a development from Hinduism, judges the given by the standard of the permanent. It brings the meta-physical or super-sensible to bear in the evaluation of the physical or sensible.   Permanence is the standard against which the  ordinary satisfactions of life are judged deficient.  Absolute permanence sets the ontological and axiological standard.  The operative presupposition is that only that which is permanent is truly real, truly important, and truly satisfactory. But if, as Buddhism also maintains, all is impermanent, then one wonders whence the standard of permanence derives its validity. If all is impermanent, and nothing has self-nature, then the standard is illusory.  If so, then we have no good reason to reject all ordinary satisfactions.

For Buddhism, the fundamental problem is suffering in the radical sense above explained, and the solution is entry into nibbana by the extirpation of desire, all desire (including even the desire for nibbana), as opposed to the moderation of desire and its redirection to worthy objects.  I question both the diagnosis and the cure.  The diagnosis is arguably faulty because arguably incoherent: it presupposes while denying the existence of an absolute ontological and axiological standard.  The cure is faulty because it issues in nihilism, as if the goal of life could be its own self-extinction.

I am talking about primitive Buddhism, that of the Pali canon.  Attention to the Mahayana would require some qualifications.

So one reason I am not a Buddhist is that I reject the doctrine of suffering.  But I also reject the doctrines of impermanence and 'no self.'  That gives me two more reasons.  These other doctrines are inseparable from the doctrine of suffering, and they, like it, have a radical meaning. It is not just that things change, but that they are in Heraclitean flux.  It is an observable fact that things change, but the nature of change cannot be 'read off' from the fact of change.  Is change Heraclitean or Aristotelian?  If the former, then everything is continuously changing; if the latter, then there are enduring substrata of change which, for a time at least, do not change: one and the same avocado is first unripe and then ripe.  Neither of these views of change is empirically obvious in the way that it is empirically obvious that there is change.

Now it is radical impermanence that underpins radical unsatisfactoriness and that also implies the doctrine of anatta, which, in Western terms, is the denial of the existence of  substances. This denial, too, is radical since it is not merely the denial that substances are permanent, but a denial that there are any substances at all. 

But I should say that I take Buddhism very seriously indeed.  It is deep and sophisticated with a rich tradition of philosophical commentary.  Apart from its mystical branch, Sufism, I cannot take Islam seriously –except as a grave threat to other religions and indeed to civilization itself.  But perhaps I have been too much influenced by Schopenhauer on this point.

Of Ether, Lead, and Misattribution

Those of us who pursue the ethereal should never forget that it is blood, iron, and lead that secure the spaces of tranquillity wherein we flourish.

I found the following in a gun forum:  “People sleep peaceably in their beds at night only because rough men stand ready to do violence on their behalf.” It was attributed to George Orwell.

I don't know whether Orwell wrote those exact words.  I rather doubt that he did.  But he did write, in Notes on Nationalism, "Those who 'abjure' violence can only do so because others are committing violence on their behalf."  The thought is essentially the same, and a good and true thought it is.

Pacifism is for angels.  But we are mixed and mixed-up beings, half animal, half angel.

You should never trust any unsourced attribution you find on the Internet.

Master Desire and Aversion

It is a curious fact that a man who has no time for his own wife easily finds time for the wife of another. Not valuing what he has, he desires what he does not have, even though at some level he understands that, were he to take possession of what he now merely desires, the pattern would repeat itself: he would again desire that which he does not possess over that which he does possess. He should learn to appreciate what he has.

The Buddhists have a saying, "Conquer desire and aversion." But this goes too far: desire and aversion are not to be conquered or extirpated so much as chastened and channeled. They are to be mastered. Without self-mastery, the highest mastery, there can be no true happiness.

The Barbarian Threat in Our Own Children

David Horowitz, Radical Son: A Generational Odyssey, Touchstone, 1997, p. 3:

Irving Kristol, who had second thoughts before me, has observed that every generation faces a barbarian threat in its own children, who need to be civilized. This is the perennial challenge: to teach our young the conditions of being human, of managing life’s tasks in a world that is (and must remain) forever imperfect. The refusal to come to terms with this reality is the heart of the radical impulse and accounts for its destructiveness, and thus for much of the bloody history of our age.

And what a know-nothing 'liberal' and idolater of youth one would have to be to bow down before children such as Greta Thunberg and over-grown children such as Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and her band of 'ocasionalists.'